Fabulous books for the year of the dragon!

Gung Hay Fat Choy! It's the Chinese Year of the dragon, and how better to celebrate this than with some fabulous books? Here some of recommendations to some of my favorite Chinese/Asian themed books:

A Tiger in the Kitchen by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan.
Chinese new year is spend by most Chinese families with food and family dinners. In A Tiger In The Kitchen, author Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan describes her own personal journey between her home country Singapore (the most food obsessed country in the world) and her life in New York. Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan left home and family at eighteen for America, proof of the rebelliousness of daughters born in the Year of the Tiger. But as a thirtysomething fashion writer in New York, she felt the Singaporean dishes that defined her childhood beginning to call her back. Was it too late to learn the secrets of her grandmothers' and aunties' kitchens, as well as the tumultuous family history that had kept them hidden before?

In her quest to recreate the dishes of her native Singapore by cooking with her family, Tan learned not only cherished recipes but long-buried stories of past generations. It's an amazing and fun written book about her journey and her family. Cheryl has a fun way of telling the story of her family and I just read it with a smile, and a craving for an Asian dish afterwards. But for this the book is also quite useful, as Cheryl end the book with ten authentic Singaporean recipes to try at home!

Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok
When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings. Disguising the more difficult truths of her life-like the staggering degree of her poverty, the weight of her family's future resting on her shoulders, or her secret love for a factory boy who shares none of her talent or ambition-Kimberly learns to constantly translate not just her language but also herself back and forth between the worlds she straddles.

Bitter Melon by Cara Chow
Frances, a Chinese-American student at an academically competitive school in San Francisco, has always had it drilled into her to be obedient to her mother and to be a straight-A student so that she can go to Med school.  But is being a doctor what she wants?  It has never even occurred to Frances to question her own feelings and desires until she accidentally winds up in speech class and finds herself with a hidden talent.  Does she dare to challenge the mother who has sacrificed everything for her?  Set in the 1980s.

Happy New Year, Julie!Julie knows Christmas will be difficult this year, but when her sister Tracy refuses to go to Dad's house for Christmas, Julie feels as if her family is falling apart. Over the holidays Julie finds comfort spending time with her best friend, Ivy Ling. The Lings are getting ready for Chinese New Year, and helping with their preparations distracts Julie from her sadness about her own family. Then she learns that her whole family is invited to the Lings' New Year banquet. Julie tries to share Ivy's excitement, but her heart sinks--with Mom, Dad, and Tracy there, how will they all get along?

Child of the Owl by Laurence Yep
Twelve-year-old Casey is waiting for the day that Barney, her father, hits it bi,'cause when that horse comes in, he tells her, it's the penthouse suite. But then hr ends up in the hospital, and Casey is sent to Chinatown to live with her grandmother, Paw-Paw. Now the waiting seems longer than ever.
Casey feels lost in Chinatown. She's not prepared for the Chinese school, the noisy crowds, missing her father. But Paw-Paw tells her about the mother Casey never knew, and about her family's owl charm and her true Chinese name. And Casey at last begins to understand that this ,Paw-Paw's Chinatown home, her parents' home, is her home,too.

April and the Dragon Lady by Lensey Namioka
April Chen is happily planning to go away to college, and she has a great new boyfriend, Steve. But as the only girl in her family, April is expected to take care of her grandmother. And Grandma, "the Dragon Lady," hates Steve and has other plans for April. Torn between her duty to her family and her desire for independence, April realizes she must find a way to define herself on her own terms

Currently reading: Dragons of Silk by Laurence Yep: The Weaving Maid wove robes of silk for Heaven, but when she met the Cowboy, she abandoned her loom to be with him. But Heaven would not allow this, and put the Milky Way in between them. Silk binds the lives of four girls from different generations with the fate of the Weaving Maid. Across a span of seventy-five years both in China and America, each girl shows the strength and courage of a dragon as she fights and sacrifices for the survival of her family and the pursuit of passion.




                  恭喜發財!